


Son of the West

by Bambie



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, BAMF Bilbo, BAMF Dwarves, Banter, Bilbo is So Done, Cultural Differences, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwobbit Bilbo, Dysfunctional Family, Epic Friendship, Gandalf is a Troll, Gen, Hobbit Culture, Misunderstandings, Other, Quest for Erebor, Sassy Bilbo, Thorin Is an Idiot, Thorin's A+ Parenting, and dwarves are most of them, bilbo has 99 problems, parenting is a big thing to dwarves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 11:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2506937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bambie/pseuds/Bambie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His clothes would have caused a perfectly respectable hobbit to blanch in horror, mussed and casual from months of travelling; the bruises decorating his fair skin would have provoked a gasp; the ragged state of his unusually straight and unusually short dark hair, a flinch; all combined with the spectacle of a Hobbit -- even a Took - with a sword at the hip would have caused even the most hardy of hobbits a fainting spell.</p><p>However, Bilbo Took was not a perfectly respectable hobbit."</p><p>Or that Dwobbit!Bilbo AU. Goddamnit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Son of the West

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah. So. I blame TV Tropes for this one.

The first sight of the famed rolling green hills belonging to the Shire came as an unpleasant victory to the small figure overlooking it from a Bree hillside. Bilbo Took cut a handsome, if dishevelled, figure propped up against a tree, biting viciously into a red apple despite the stinging pain, fresh from a bloody shave, across his jawline where too much dark stubble had grown from lack of steady hands.

His clothes would have caused a perfectly respectable hobbit to blanch in horror, mussed and casual from months of travelling; the bruises decorating his fair skin would have provoked a gasp; the ragged state of his short unusually straight and unusually short dark hair, a flinch; all combined with the spectacle of a Hobbit -- even a _Took_ \- with a sword at the hip would have caused even the most hardy of hobbits a fainting spell.

However, Bilbo Took was not a perfectly respectable hobbit. He was, in fact, only half a hobbit at all, the son of Belladonna Took and a dwarf. Some fools would say this was the boy's greatest tragedy.

Even some fools had a spark of wisdom.

The Shire was a bruise spanning his heart he was ever-worrying.

Bilbo felt an odd pit in his stomach under the distant swooping feeling of joy as he hesitated on the hill overlooking the Shire. The constrictions suited him ill -- the petty gossip, the rounded waistcoats that felt always a little dangerous after sword-fighting near Moira with a caravan of Rangers, and the disgusted looks over _adventures_ and his association with the wizard, Bilbo's wanderlust better suited to a tween than a hobbit of fifty years -- but in the same breath, it was beautiful to be back home to the place he had rough-housed ( _gently_ , his mother always warned, face bright with laughter, _you're stronger than them, love_ ) with his Took cousins and shrieked on his grandfather's lap as Gandelf entertained with his fireworks. The bright memories almost, almost worth all the scornful ones that had driven Bilbo off to far away lands.

 _For all the good it caused_ , Bilbo thought bleakly, a white-hot lance of pain curving up his side, the memory of a sword blade.

Speaking of . . .

Trembling hands flung the apple up into the air, a bloom of half-eaten red, and Bilbo's other hand, a quick-blur, threw a knife up, the silver flashing white in the sunlight and cutting the apple core effortlessly in half, the halves smashing to the ground on either side of Bilbo, the knife promptly snatched up out of the air.

"Now surely," sniffed Bilbo mildly, the action coming back to him, fast as muscle memory. "That at least deserved a clap or two."

There was a pause, and then the sheepish voice of Ferdinand Took volunteered, "Hello, Bilbo."

That, Bilbo supposed, was something, but it was the utterly unrepentant voice of Primula Brandybuck that made him smile.

"Not very modest of you, Bilbo," she called, trotting out of the woods, tutting and grinning, the tawny-head of Ferdinand close on her heels.

There were lines around her eyes, tiny creases, where Bilbo's face remained fresh and young, though she was a scant handful of years his elder, but her blue eyes were brighter than his own striking green had been in decades -- sparkling and warm, and everything to him.

"You seem to have caught me at an immodest moment," he said with a wry glance down at his clothes -- for he usually underwent the effort of dressing to suit the Shire, already he had a pressed waistcoat draped over his bed in the inn. He scarcely had the time to wince through shaving before finding himself here, let alone change.

It had been a strange desperation, that had brought Bilbo Took here.

"And at a late one, too," said Primula.

"That was hardly my fault," Bilbo protested. He did detest rudeness. "Only a wizard could've foreseen that bridge collapsing near the Brandywine."

"Which you're not? The fauntlings' will be _terribly_ disappointed!"

Laughing, Primula finally reached him and threw herself into his arms. Bilbo caught her, barely, a flicker of pain sparking white behind his eyes, but he was laughing too as waves of his cousin's red hair swept over his cheeks; as Ferd ducked down to hug his legs, skinny arms clamping on tight, Bilbo calling up to the skies, "Eru! What kind of stories have you been telling the little ones?!"

His ire was false, hollow, brightened with delight, for if it was anything Bilbo knew, it was that not only would Primula's stories combat the worst whispers about him, but that none of them would be as bloody as what Bilbo left behind him with a weary heart.　

* * *

 Primula entertained Bilba as they walked back to Bree with all the falsehoods she had spread about the Shire, Ferd dodging their steps and adding in cheeky comments, the lies ranging from absurd tales about fangs ("Bloody hell, Prim! The Shire already looks at me like an evil step-son!" to which Ferd chimed in, "That prob'ly has more to do with the sword, Mister Bilbo,") to genuinely amusing tales of his adventures as a half-hobbit, half-elven, half-wizard ("Too many halves," Bilbo pointed out, to which Primula told him to stuff it) that kept them busy all the way to the Prancing Pony. When Bilbo came downstairs from his room, his pack slung over one shoulder, he found Ferd trying to wheedle a man-sized pint of ale from an irate bartender while Primula grinned at his attempts and shook her head at the Man whenever he looked her way for aid.

"Well!" Primula called with a whistle, loud and shameless, unashamed of the surprised ripple going through the pub. "I am glad to see you remain handsome, still, under all that blood."

 _Tact,_ Bilbo despaired, wincing to himself.

"Thank you, Prim," Bilbo said dryly, feeling his face warm. Though he would never admit it, Bilbo always selected his clothes carefully when returning to the Shire, to the scattered handful of moment he could bare to be Hobbitish once more, and he felt distantly proud of how well his trousers fit, tailored to perfection, the green material light on his legs and ending above his bare feet; his matching waist coat, laced with gold stitching, pinning his crisp white shirt to his ribs and cloaking the bandages from even discerning eyes. He had not been sure of its fit now, with the weight he had lost -- his form newly sleek and thin and -- very tired.

"Perhaps we should collect our cousin before we need a wheelbarrow to carry him?" Bilbo suggested when he was at what more reasonable creatures considered a respectful speaking distance.

Primula arched a brow at him, smiling widely at him from the corner of her catlike eyes. "Someone might reckon you eager to get back to our humble home, Bilbo."

"Or we could stay about town a while," Bilbo said politely, seeing her read through him as he had known she would and feeling a great swell of affection under the panicked cramping of his stomach. "I would not wish to rush you."

Prim's smile became a smirk, the underlining soft, though, for him. "Certainly not. There is no practicality in wasting what little daylight remains like those blasted Sackville-Bagginses -- they've become even more unbearable in your absence, you will not believe it, Bilbo -- "

"Even more?" Bilbo echoed, careful around the edges of that thought -- of Bagginses -- and his own sliver of wry humour. "One shudders to think."

There was a great heaving sigh from the bartender, frowning down at Ferd's skinny form, balancing precariously on the edge of a stool with a charming grin plastered across his face, blind to the helpless irritation on the Man's. He was big as all Men were, a fact Bilbo took in with caution and raised eyebrows, considering the sword at his hip carefully.

"Oh look," Primula noted, beaming in a way that made Bilbo twitch instinctively for cover. "Overprotective Cousin Bilbo makes a show. Wondered when you would start fussing over the boy. Don't fret, he's almost out of his tweens now!"

"Cautious," Bilbo protested, "I do not fret, thank you very much."

"You do," Primula contradicted. Bilbo wondered with great exasperation if now might be the time to remind her that he had killed before. "Like a mother hen about to lay eggs."

"Excuse me. Tooks have driven milder tempers to broiling point, if you remember very well -- "

"Yours in particular, I seem to recall." She was outright grinning at him now. "You even puff up like a hen!"

Before Prim could attempt to distract him anymore, the bartender took this moment to chuck them out of the pub, his patience finally at an end, and promptly banned Ferdinand Took, son of Sigismound Took, great-great-great grandson of the Thrain, from the Prancing Pony for life.

"I didn't even do anything!" Ferd moaned, shrinking under Primula's laughter.

"You certainly did do something," Bilbo informed him, thinning his lips to hide his own laughter.

"You're just lucky Bilbo doesn't decide to do something!" Prim cackled.

As quickly as possible Bilbo collected his charges, smacking Ferd as a reprimand and making him turn green with the memory of his sole attempt at filching Bilbo's mug of Old Gamgee's moonshine his last return to the Shire, but his light mood was not to last longer than the walk back to the Shire.

It was clear he had been expected back, and that the welcome was cool at best. The streets were unusually bare, children swept off the streets as if --

As it always did, Bilbo's heart clenched and his stomach turned at the idea of Hobbits hiding from him as if he were some great evil. As if he were the Orcs he had fought on his travels or the goblins he had slain with steel, side-by-side with the Rangers, most of whom he had helped bury, mangled boys and men, in poor graves by the end of Moria. Bilbo's hands fisted, knuckles whitening, head hanging to hide his slip in emotion. _They know nothing of evil_ , he thought tiredly. As he had not, once, when his mother had been there to shield him and soften the world's stings. _I hope they never do._

Despite that, all of that, it still stabbed at him to see how few Hobbits didn't hide from him -- still. As if he had not grown up with them, their children. There was a reason his visits to the Shire were usually spaced out to once a year. It took Bilbo a while, to forget how to hate Primula for bringing him back here. To care once more for why, exactly, Bilbo had run so far.

 _This place never wanted me_ , Bilbo thought fiercely. _I never wanted it_.

* * *

 The tale goes like this --

Bungo Baggins built a home for Belladonna Took with his own hands. He sweat love into the fall of the floorboards, and sighed devotion into window planes, and bled into table tops, and chairs, and furnishings in exactly the right size. A home was made; a perfect hobbit hole, built from his hands and her money. It was supposed to be the end of their story -- the wild lady settling down with the clever gentleman and living happily ever after: Bag End.

Until Bungo Baggins died.

Belladonna Took grieved, and wept, and railed, but she lived. She lived to raise another's son in the smial that was supposed to be her happily ever after.

A smial built with a man's love, and a woman's money, and passed down to that woman's son.

On the day he left the Shire, Bilbo Took had pressed the keys into Primula Brandybuck's hands and said _keep this for me. Please._

Primula Brandybuck had not said, as she wished; _stay here with us, your family._ She knew him too well for that, loved him too much to force him still. _Guess this saves me from being married off then._ And _you bloody come back to see me, you daft --_

* * *

The wizard arrived at Bag-End just as noon was settling over the house.

Bilbo would be lying -- unconvincingly, given how he swore and dropped his pipe on his foot, promptly shaving off a few hairs to his own horror -- through his teeth if he said he had been expecting him.

It had been a long day, his return to the Shire, and Bilbo wanted nothing but silence the instant he saw the round green door of Bag-End. Primula had been kind enough to send Ferd away, back home, as the daylight begun to fade away, the skies begun to stain grey, and Bilbo's head began to ache with the lad's boundless energy. Bilbo, it had to be said, _adored_ his Took cousins in all their loud enthusiasm and absurdity. But after a battlefield, after Orcs and Wargs and blood and the _noise . . ._

Prim knew how to settle into silence, and to hook her arm through his when Bilbo faltered in front of Bag-End, and to speak easily to him still. "Drogo won't be joining us this week, I'm afraid; he's visiting his mam." Bilbo had felt a spark of relief -- he had never felt like such an intruder, sharing a roof with a Baggins in Bag-End, _feeling Prim's husband's skittishness . . ._ His steps felt a little easier, breathes a little less tight, as Prim half-dragged him up the hill. "Frodo'll be joining us in a bit. I found him all curled up by the door this morning; silly boy fell asleep waiting for me to leave and meet you. Said he planned to follow me 'stead of bothering with school. He'll not leave you alone, Bilbo, 'til you tell him at least three new stories." Primula had _hmmped_ , a sly glint to her eyes. "Thinks Uncle Bilbo tells better stories than his own mam and da!"

"Uncle Bilbo does," Bilbo had corrected cheekily. His mood had been much improved by the thought of his young nephew, the boy barely more than a dot with huge blue eyes who had taken to following Bilbo around the last few times he had returned. It had taken him a while to grow accustomed to the strangeness, of little feet splashing through the mud in his wake and hands clutching his coat and fascinated questions about the worlds from a _Hobbit_ , but precious moments to find it welcome.

Still. Bilbo had thought it best to slink out into the garden for a smoke to settle his nerves before the lad started jumping all over him.

And.

Well. Better he end up, scowling at Gandalf while trying to pry his favourite -- _his favourite_ \-- throwing knife out of the pristine white fence Bilbo had defaced many times growing up (though never quite in this fashion) than trying to patch up a knife wound on a squealing, flailing Hobbit.

"Your aim has rather improved with those blades," the wizard grumbled, frowning down at the precise halves of what had once been his own pipe.

Honestly _wizards_. Bilbo could only imagine it was the ridiculous luck following the Man around that allowed him to sneak up on innocent folk like himself, let alone in _broad daylight._

"Yes, it has." Bilbo sniffed mildly with one last hard tug on the knife, the strain pulling at his shoulder, but it did not seem likely he could dislodge it without also end up taking the fence with him and -- knowing his fortunate -- dying from a picket fence to the stomach. He had _enough_ internal injuries, thank you. "Something _you_ \--" Bilbo pointed sharply at his old friend, " -- probably ought to remember when sneaking up on me or anyone else for that matter! One wonders how you've not yet been stabbed!"

The blasted wizard simply chuckled, a warm and fond sound, blue eyes sparkling down at the hobbit. "My dear Bilbo, you never cease to amaze me."

Heat rose to Bilbo's cheeks, tugging at his mouth. "Yes. Well." He coughed, fussing with his waistcoat to avoid Gandalf's eyes. He could hardly _help it_. Bilbo considered Gandalf to be his longest and perhaps even his dearest friend; his memories of the man stretching from fireworks and dragons made of smoke swooping around his head, passing harmlessly through grasping hands to a steady presence as Bilbo buried his mother and a watchful eye as Bilbo left the Shire, firstly for Rivendale and later to sell his sword, to see the world, to learn it. Bilbo had wept before Gandalf and seen the wizard stooped and old over a grave. Bilbo worried for him. " _Someone_ must try to keep you alive. I fear for the world if it lost the most meddlesome of wizards. How else would young hobbits find trouble?"

Gandalf's eyes twinkled. "Perfectly well by themselves, I imagine."

Bilbo snorted, propping his back up against the damaged fence. "The Tooks, perhaps, but what can really be done about them?"

It was a good question to pose at 1 in the afternoon. The sun was shallow in the sky, falling down on the wizard and the hobbit as they stood outside a bright green door. A moment passed in silence after these greetings. Bilbo's smile begun to slip, a slow exhale leaving his lungs, as the birds tweeted and fluttered above their heads. His side stung, throbbing in time with his heart, the slow-healing skin.

"Not that I'm not glad to see you," said Bilbo. "But have you come here? Now?"

"Why, because you are here."

As Bilbo always was this time of year, this week in particular, the week he left the Shire on twenty years ago in the company of this wizard.

"And what do you want with me?"

"I am looking for someone to share in an adventure. An exceptionally skilled burglar."

But then, Bilbo had always been slow to heal.

His eyebrows rose up his forehead, startled. "I didn't realise you handled contracts," Bilbo said wryly. "And so poorly -- I'm not really a burglar, Gandalf, it isn't in my skill-set. And . . . " Bilbo hesitated, unwilling to say it so baldly, before forcing himself to speak. "And I cannot now. You know I cannot."

"I think you will make a very fine burglar, Bilbo Took."

 _Had he forgotten_? Bilbo's shoulders stiffened, a confused agitation buzzing around his insides. "That's . . . not really the point."

"You have been aimless for far too long," Gandalf pronounced.

"Have I now?" Bilba said sharply. He remembered himself quickly, forcing a tight polite smile to his face. It was reflex, to fall back on manners. "Perhaps," he hummed, turning away from the wizard. "Perhaps." And beginning to walk stiffly back to Bag-End. But Gandalf called out to him:

"Your mother's loss . . . the loss is irreparable, but you have spent entirely too long in old patterns, Bilbo. Perhaps the arrival of your father and his company will change that."

Bilba froze.

His --

_His fath --_

"No," Bilbo managed, voice hoarse, cracking and desperate. His heart was pounding in his ears, terrified and --

 _No, no._ _I don't want him,_ Bilbo told himself roughly. He had outgrown that childhood dreaminess, that poisonous want for something to fill the gap in his life, the hole he stumbled, blind as ever, wounded as ever, into day by day. It was not --

He had never expected to be --

It would hurt, quick and sharp, a shallow stinging wound plaguing him to his dying ways. He had never hoped for otherwise. Had never dared hope. No. Bilbo wanted none of that, none of _him,_ whoever he might have been. Bilbo wanted _nothing_.

He heard the shift of cloth from behind him, could imagine clearly how Gandalf was leaning forward on his staff, bushy eyebrows furrowed. "No?"

"I don't want him here," Bilbo said fiercely, breathlessly. " _Do -- not --_ bring him here. No. No. They cannot come. I will not allow it." He swallowed. The bright green door of Bag-End wobbled in his vision, his mother's face lapping at his mind like sea waves. "I will not."

"I am afraid," Gandalf said in a slow inscrutinable tone, "It is already far too late for that. They should be here for dinnertime."

The words froze Bilbo, knees locking more solidly in place than they had since his first battle. Since a Ranger had tackled him safely into the mud and barked at him to  _\--_

_MOVE, BOY!_

But by the time Bilba turned around, Gandalf was already long gone. 

Bilbo was still frozen in place, staring out at the rolling hills and empty plains, when Primula came to collect him. Later his recollection of would be vague of how he later came to be slumped at the kitchen table, muscles sore from how Primula had -- muttering darkly -- lugged him into Bag-End. He resurfaced sometime later, distanced from his own panic, and managed to answer Primula's demands.

"Blasted wizard, I ought to box his ears," she hissed, scowling, pacing around him like a fretful mother bear. Bilbo managed a snort at the idea. He could clearly see his cousin giving the wizard what-for. "Springing this on you! Not giving you any choice in the manner! And with no proper warning, neither! I don't know how we're going to feed thirteen dwarves!"

He hadn't even thought of that. With all his experience with how Dwarves feasted. Violently. Messily. Frodo would be delighted. Primula's frying pan was bound to have a skull-shaped dent by tomorrow.

 _The imposition_ . . . the inconvenience to Primula made his blood curdle.

"We could always go on holiday," said Bilba, his voice rusty. His stomach was doing back-flips, his head spinning. _His father_ . . . he couldn't even think of it without teetering on the edge of something steep so he decided not to. "Boating, perhaps? Though I still think you as mad as any Took for enjoying it so much."

"We always thought you were the sensible Took til you went haring off adventuring," Primula commented, shooting him a considering look. "The neighbours would get a bit of a fright if we did leave, though sod their opinions. Frodo certainly'd never let us forget it!" Warmth glittered in her gaze. Bilbo found it easier, suddenly, to breathe. "It might even outshine his dear uncle finally decidin' to grace us with his presence!"

 _Us_. It echoed around Bilbo's head. _Us_.

He wasn't alone in this.

 


End file.
